CHAPTER I.

THE FABLE AND ITS INTERPRETATION.

Amongst the curious myths of the Middle Ages none were more extravagant and persistent than that of the “Vegetable Lamb of Tartary,” known also as the “Scythian Lamb,” and the “Borametz,” or “Barometz,” the latter title being derived from a Tartar word signifying “a lamb.” This “lamb” was described as being at the same time both a true animal and a living plant. According to some writers this composite “plant-animal” was the fruit of a tree which sprang from a seed like that of a melon, or gourd; and when the fruit or seed-pod of this tree was fully ripe it burst open and disclosed to view within it a little lamb, perfect in form, and in every way resembling an ordinary lamb naturally born. This remarkable tree was supposed to grow in the territory of “the Tartars of the East,” formerly called “Scythia”; and it was said that from the fleeces of these “tree-lambs,” which were of surpassing whiteness, the natives of the country where they were found wove materials for their garments and “head-dress.” In the course of time another version of the story was circulated, in which the lamb was not described as being the fruit of a tree, but as being a living lamb attached by its navel to a short stem rooted in the earth. The stem, or stalk, on which the lamb was thus suspended above the ground was sufficiently flexible to allow the animal to bend downward, and browze on the herbage within its reach. When all the grass within the length of its tether had been consumed the stem withered and the lamb died. This plant-lamb was reported to have bones, blood, and delicate flesh, and to be a favourite food of wolves, though no other carnivorous animal would attack it. Many other details were given concerning it, which will be found mentioned in the following pages. This legend met with almost universal credence from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and, even then, only gave place to an explanation of it as absurd and delusive as itself. Following the outline sketched in the preface, I shall, in this chapter, lay before the reader the story of the “Barometz” or “Vegetable Lamb,” as related by various writers, and shall then give my reasons for assigning to the fable an interpretation very different from that which has been hitherto accepted as the true one.

The story of a wonderful plant which bore living lambs for its fruit, and grew in Tartary, seems to have been first brought into public notice in England in the reign of Edward III., by Sir John Mandeville, the “Knyght of Ingelond that was y bore in the toun of Seynt Albans, and travelide aboute in the worlde in many diverse countreis, to se mervailes and customes of countreis, and diversiteis of folkys, and diverse shap of men and of beistis.” In the 26th chapter of the book in which he “wrot and telleth all the mervaile that he say,” and which he dedicated to the King, he treats of “the Countreis and Yles that ben beȝond the Lond of Cathay, and of the Frutes there”; and amongst the curiosities he met with in the dominions of the “Cham” of Tartary he mentions the following:--

“Now schalle I seye ȝou semyngly of Countrees and Yles that ben beȝonde the Countrees that I have spoken of. Wherefore I seye you in passynge be the Lond of Cathaye toward the high Ynde, and towards Bacharye, men passen be a Kyngdom that men clepen Caldilhe: that is a fair Contree. And there growethe a maner of Fruyt, as though it weren Gowrdes: and whan thei ben rype men kutten hem ato, and men fynden with inne a lytylle Best, in Flesche, in Bon and Blode, as though it were a lytylle Lomb with outen Wolle. And Men eten both the Frut and the Best; and that is a great Marveylle. Of that Frute I have eaten; alle thoughe it were wondirfulle, but that I knowe wel that God is marveyllous in his Werkes.”[1]

[1] ‘The Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundevile, Knt.’ See Appendix A.

Sir John Mandeville appears to have never previously heard of this strange plant, but reports of its existence under various phases may be traced back, as we shall presently see, to a date at least eighteen hundred years earlier than that of his mention of it. As it is in the works of these older writers that we shall find the long-sought key of the mystery, we will set them aside for the present and follow the growth and dissemination of the fable.

Claude Duret, of Moulins, who, in his ‘_Histoire Admirable des Plantes_ (1605),’ devotes to it a chapter entitled “The Boramets of Scythia, or Tartary, true Zoophytes or plant-animals; that is to say, plants living and sensitive like animals,” therein says:--

“I remember to have read some time ago in a very ancient Hebrew book entitled in Latin the _Talmud Ierosolimitanum_, and written by a Jewish Rabbi Jochanan, assisted by others, in the year of salvation 436, that a certain personage named Moses Chusensis (he being a native of Ethiopia) affirmed, on the authority of Rabbi Simeon, that there was a certain country of the earth which bore a zoophyte, or plant-animal, called in the Hebrew ‘_Jeduah_.’ It was in form like a lamb, and from its navel grew a stem or root by which this zoophyte or plant-animal was fixed, attached, like a gourd, to the soil below the surface of the ground, and, according to the length of its stem or root, it devoured all the herbage which it was able to reach within the circle of its tether. The hunters who went in search of this creature were unable to capture or remove it until they had succeeded in cutting the stem by well-aimed arrows or darts, when the animal immediately fell prostrate to the earth and died. Its bones being placed with certain ceremonies and incantations in the mouth of one desiring to foretell the future, he was instantly seized with a spirit of divination, and endowed with the gift of prophecy.”

As I was unable to find in the Latin translation of the Talmud of Jerusalem the passage mentioned by Claude Duret, and was anxious to ascertain whether any reference to this curious legend existed in the Talmudical books, I sought the assistance of learned members of the Jewish community, and, amongst them, of the Rev. Dr. Hermann Adler, Chief Rabbi Delegate of the United Congregations of the British Empire. He most kindly interested himself in the matter, and wrote to me as follows:--

“It affords me much gratification to give you the information you desire on the Borametz. In the Mishna _Kilaim_, chap. viii. § 5 (a portion of the Talmud), the passage occurs:--‘Creatures called _Adne Hasadeh_ (literally, “lords of the field”) are regarded as beasts.’ There is a variant reading,--_Abne Hasadeh_ (stones of the field). A commentator, Rabbi Simeon, of Sens (died about 1235), writes as follows on this passage:--‘It is stated in the Jerusalem Talmud that this is a human being of the mountains: it lives by means of its navel: if its navel be cut it cannot live. I have heard in the name of Rabbi Meir, the son of Kallonymos of Speyer, that this is the animal called ‘_Jeduah_.’ This is the ‘_Jedoui_’ mentioned in Scripture (lit. _wizard_, Leviticus xix. 31); with its bones witchcraft is practised. A kind of large stem issues from a root in the earth on which this animal, called ‘_Jadua_,’ grows, just as gourds and melons. Only the ‘_Jadua_’ has, in all respects, a human shape, in face, body, hands, and feet. By its navel it is joined to the stem that issues from the root. No creature can approach within the tether of the stem, for it seizes and kills them. Within the tether of the stem it devours the herbage all around. When they want to capture it no man dares approach it, but they tear at the stem until it is ruptured, whereupon the animal dies.’ Another commentator, Rabbi Obadja of Berbinoro, gives the same explanation, only substituting--’They aim arrows at the stem until it is ruptured,’ &c. The author of an ancient Hebrew work, Maase Tobia (Venice, 1705), gives an interesting description of this animal. In Part IV. c. 10, page 786, he mentions the Borametz found in Great Tartary. He repeats the description of Rabbi Simeon, and adds what he has found in ‘A New Work on Geography,’ namely, that ‘the Africans (_sic_) in Great Tartary, in the province of Sambulala, are enriched by means of seeds like the seeds of gourds, only shorter in size, which grow and blossom like a stem to the navel of an animal which is called _Borametz_ in their language, i.e. ‘_lamb_,’ on account of its resembling a lamb in all its limbs, from head to foot; its hoofs are cloven, its skin is soft, its wool is adapted for clothing, but it has no horns, only the hairs of its head, which grow, and are intertwined like horns. Its height is half a cubit and more. According to those who speak of this wondrous thing, its taste is like the flesh of fish, its blood as sweet as honey, and it lives as long as there is herbage within reach of the stem, from which it derives its life. If the herbage is destroyed or perishes, the animal also dies away. It has rest from all beasts and birds of prey, except the wolf, which seeks to destroy it.’ The author concludes by expressing his belief, that this account of the animal having the shape of a lamb is more likely to be true than that it is of human form.”

We have an interesting record of another journey into Tartary, undertaken almost simultaneously with that of Sir John Mandeville, by Odoricus of Friuli, a Minorite friar belonging to the monastery of Utina, near Padua. The exact date of his departure on his travels is not mentioned, but he returned home in 1330, and the history of his adventures and observations[2] was written in the month of May of that year--thus taking precedence by about thirty years of the narrative of the old English traveller.

[2] ‘The Journall of Frier Odoricus of Friuli, one of the order of the Minorites, concerning strange things which he saw amongst the Tartars of the East.’--‘Hakluyt Collection of Early Voyages,’ vol. ii. 1809. See Appendix B.

Odoricus, describing his visit to the country of the “Grand Can,” says:--“I heard of another wonder from persons worthy of credit; namely, that in a province of the said Can, in which is the mountain of Capsius[3] (the province is called ‘Kalor’), there grow gourds, which, when they are ripe, open, and within them is found a little beast like unto a young lamb, even as I myself have heard reported that there stand certain trees upon the shore of the Irish Sea bearing fruits like unto a gourd, which at a certain time of the year do fall into the water and become birds called Bernacles; and this is true.”

[3] Probably an error of transcription for “Caspius.” The mountain of Caspius (now Kasbin) is about eighty miles due south of the Caspian Sea, and in Persian territory, near Teheran.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the “Scythian Lamb” was made a subject of investigation and argument by some of the most celebrated writers of that period.

Fortunio Liceti, Professor of Philosophy at Padua, writing in 1518,[4] gives his complete credence to the story of the little beast like a lamb found within a fruit-pod when it bursts from over-ripeness; and besides the above passage from Odoricus quotes another, by which it would appear that the worthy friar afterwards himself saw this botanical curiosity, and described it as being “as white as snow.” I have been unable to find this paragraph in the Hakluyt edition of Odoricus’s travels.

[4] ‘_De Spontaneo Viventium Ortu_,’ lib. 3, cap. 45.

Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, however, in his ‘_Historia Naturæ_’ (Antwerp, 1605), also quotes these two passages, and in exactly the same words. He probably copied them from Liceti, and not from the original.

Sigismund, Baron von Herberstein, who, in 1517 and 1526, was the ambassador of the Emperors Maximilian I. and Charles V. to the “Grand Czard, or Duke of Muscovy,” in his ‘Notes on Russia,’[5] gives further details of this “vegetable-animal.” He writes:--“In the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea, between the rivers Volga and Jaick, formerly dwelt the kings of the Zavolha, certain Tartars, in whose country is found a wonderful and almost incredible curiosity, of which Demetrius Danielovich, a person in high authority, gave me the following account; namely, that his father, who was once sent on an embassy by the Duke of Muscovy to the Tartar king of the country referred to, whilst he was there, saw and remarked, amongst other things, a certain seed like that of a melon, but rather rounder and longer, from which, when it was set in the earth, grew a plant resembling a lamb, and attaining to a height of about two and a half feet, and which was called in the language of the country ‘Borametz,’ or ‘the little Lamb.’ It had a head, eyes, ears, and all other parts of the body, as a newly-born lamb. He also stated that it had an exceedingly soft wool, which was frequently used for the manufacturing of head-coverings. Many persons also affirmed to me that they had seen this wool. Further, he told me that this plant, if plant it should be called, had blood, but not true flesh: that, in place of flesh, it had a substance similar to the flesh of the crab, and that its hoofs were not horny, like those of a lamb, but of hairs brought together into the form of the divided hoof of a living lamb. It was rooted by the navel in the middle of the belly, and devoured the surrounding herbage and grass, and lived as long as that lasted; but when there was no more within its reach the stem withered, and the lamb died. It was of so excellent a flavour that it was the favourite food of wolves and other rapacious animals. For myself,” adds the Baron, “although I had previously regarded these Borametz as fabulous, the accounts of it were confirmed to me by so many persons worthy of credence that I have thought it right to describe it; and this with the less hesitation because I was told by Guillaume Postel,[6] a man of much learning, that a person named Michel, interpreter of the Turkish and Arabic languages to the Republic of Venice, assured him that he had seen brought to Chalibontis (now Karaboghaz), on the south-eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, from Samarcand and other districts lying towards the south, the very soft and delicate wool of a certain plant used by the Mussulmans as padding for the small caps which they wear on their shaven heads, and also as a protection for their chests. He said, however, that he had not seen the plant, nor knew its name, except that it was called ‘Smarcandeos,’ and was a zoophyte, or plant-animal. The numerous descriptions given to him,” he added, “differed so little that he was induced to believe that there was more truthfulness in this matter than he had supposed, and to accept it as a fact redounding to the glory of the Sovereign Creator, to whom all things are possible.”

[5] ‘_Rerum Muscoviticarum Commentarii_,’ 1549. See Appendix C.

[6] Author of ‘_Liber de Causis, seu de Principiis et Originibus Naturæ_,’ &c.

Shortly after the publication of the above narrative by Sigismund von Herberstein, and probably in allusion to it, Girolamo Cardano, of Pavia, carefully discussed the phenomenon in question in his work ‘_De Rerum Naturâ_,’[7] printed at Nürnberg in 1557. He endeavoured to expose the absurdity of the statements made concerning this “animal-plant,” and explained the physical impossibility of its existence in the manner described. He argued that if it had blood it must have a heart, and that the soil in which a plant grows is not fitted to supply a heart with movement and vital heat. He also pointed out that embryo animals, especially, require warmth for their development from the _ovum_, which they could not obtain if raised from a seed planted in the earth, demonstrating clearly enough that no warm-blooded animal could exist thus organically fastened to the earth. In reply, however, to a possible question suggested by himself, why there should be no plant-animal on land, seeing that there are zoophytes in the sea, he, with the weakness and indecision which were innate in his character, admitted that “where the atmosphere was thick and dense there might, perhaps, be a plant having sensation, and also imperfect flesh, such as that of mollusks and fishes.”

[7] Lib. vi. cap. 22.

This weak point in his argument laid him open to the criticism of his relentless enemy, Julius Cæsar Scaliger. Always on the watch to wound and harass Cardano with cutting satire and irritating gibes, this caustic persecutor lost no time in making his attack. In one of his “_Exercitationes_”[8] he thus personally addressed the object of his sneering disparagement:--

[8] ‘_Exotericarum Exercitationum_,’ lib. xv., “_De Subtilitate_”; _ad Hieronymum Cardanum Exercit._ 181, cap. 29. Frankfort, 1557. See Appendix D.

“You may regard as beyond ridicule this wonderful Tartar plant. The most renowned of the Tartar hordes of the present day, by its reputation, its antiquity, and its nobility, is that of the Zavolha. These people sow a seed like that of the melon, but rather smaller, from which springs and grows out of the earth a plant which they call ‘Borametz,’ _i.e._ ‘the Lamb.’ This plant grows to the height of three feet in the likeness of a real lamb, having feet, hoofs, ears, and a head perfect with the exception of horns, instead of which the plant has hairs in the form of horns. Its skin is soft and delicate, and is used in Tartary for head-gear. The internal pulp is said to be like the flesh of the cray-fish, and to have an agreeable flavour; but if an incision be made, real blood flows from it. The root or stalk which rises from the earth is attached to the navel of the lamb, and (which is more remarkable) whilst the plant is surrounded with herbage it lives as does a lamb, but as soon as it has consumed all within its reach it withers and dies. This does not happen by the arrival of the plant at any definite period of its growth, for it has been found by experiment that if the grass around it be removed it perishes. Another most curious circumstance connected with it is that wolves will eat it with avidity, though no other carnivorous animals will attack it. This,” says Scaliger, still apostrophizing Cardano, “is merely a little sauce and seasoning to your allusion to the fable of the Lamb; but I would like to know from you how four distinct legs and their feet can be produced from one stem.”

It is very remarkable that this dissertation of Scaliger, which is really a keen satire on Cardano, and a sarcastic repetition of his version of the fable with ironical comments thereon, has been almost invariably taken as serious, and regarded as an expression of his entire belief in the “Scythian Lamb,” as described. Of all subsequent writers on the subject, Deusingius[9] seems to have been the only one who clearly perceived Scaliger’s intention and meaning. Hence, many profound believers in the myth have claimed as their champion one who would have derided them for their credulity.

[9] Antonius Deusingius, Professor of Medicine, and Rector of the University of Groningen, in his ‘_Fasciculus Dissertationum Selectorum_,’ p. 598, printed in 1660, declares his own utter disbelief in this animal-vegetable monstrosity, and after quoting Scaliger, thus writes of him:--”_Hæc equidem Scaliger, qui tamen ne serio historiam narrare credatur quam ipse revera pro fabulosa habet, nequaquam vero approbat, ut perperam de eo refert Sennert._”--_Hyp. Physic._ 5, cap. 8.

Claude Duret, for example, whose implicit faith in the marvellous zoophyte nothing could shake, quotes verbatim in its defence the remarks of “le grand Jules César Scaliger,” and asks[10] triumphantly,--

[10] ‘_Histoire admirable des Plantes_,’ p. 322.

“Who cannot see plainly that Cardano, after having long doubted, and after having adduced philosophical arguments drawn from the works of Aristotle and other eminent writers, felt himself obliged and condemned to confess that in a place filled with heavy and dense air (such as is Tartary) the Borametz--true plant-animals--might exist as described, as well as sponges, ‘sea-nettles,’ and ‘sea-lungs,’ which every one knows are true zoophytes, or animal-plants.”

After this amusing assumption that the air of Tartary possesses the “weight” and “density” necessary for the production of plant-animals, Duret quotes from Sir John Mandeville’s book in the language in which it was originally written--the Romanic--the passage which I have extracted from the old English version of the enterprising knight’s ‘Voiage and Travailes,’ and also cites, in confirmation of the prodigy, the account given of it by the Baron Von Herberstein. He then strongly expresses his own belief that--

“Of all the strange and marvellous trees, shrubs, plants and herbs which Nature, or, rather, God himself, has produced, or ever will produce in this Universe, there will never be seen anything so worthy of admiration and contemplation as these ‘Borametz’ of Scythia, or Tartary,--plants which are also animals, and which browze and eat as quadrupeds.... If I did not entirely believe this I would denounce it as fabulous, instead of accepting it as a fact; but those who are in the habit of daily studying good and rare books, printed and in manuscript, and who are endowed with great wisdom and understanding, know that there is no impossibility in Nature, _i.e._ God himself, to whom be all the honour and glory!”

Besides the authors already quoted, and others who merely copied the narratives of their predecessors, Guillaume de Saluste, the Sieur du Bartas, accepted as authentic the story of the Vegetable Lamb. In his poem “_La Semaine_,” published in 1578, in which the first few days of the existence of all terrestrial things are described reverently and with considerable power, he represents this plant as one of those which excited the astonishment of the newly-created Adam as he wandered on the first day of the second week through the Garden of Eden, the earthly Paradise in which he had been placed.

“Or, confus, il se perd dans les tournoyements, Embrouillées erreurs, courbez desvoyements, Conduits virevoultez, et sentes desloyales D’un Dedale infiny qui comprend cent Dedales, Clos non de romarins dextrement cizelez En hommes, my-chevaux, en courserots seelez, En escaillez oyseaux, en balènes cornues, Et mille autres façons de bestes incogneues, Ains de vrays animaux en la terre plantez, Humant l’air des poulmons, et d’herbes alimentez, Tels que les Boramets, qui chez les Scythes naissent D’une graine menues, et des plantes repaissent; Bien que du corps, des yeux, de la bouche, et du nez, Ils semblent des moutons qui sont naguières naiz. Ils le seroient du vray, si dans l’alme poictrine De terre ils n’enfonçoient une vive raçine Qui tient à leur nombril, et tombe le meme jour Quils ont brouttè le foin qui croissoit à l’entour, O, merveilleux effect de dextre divine, La plante a chair et sang, l’animal a raçine, La plante comme en rond de soymême se meut, L’animal a des pieds, et si marcher ne peut: La plante est sans rameaux, sans fruict, et sans feuillage, L’animal sans amour, sans sexe, et vif lignage; La plante a belles dents, paist son ventre affamè Du fourrage voisin, l’animal est sémè.”

Joshua Sylvester, the admiring translator of Du Bartas,[11] gives the following version of the above lines:--

[11] ‘Du Bartas: His Divine Weekes and Workes, translated and dedicated to the King’s most excellent Maiestie by Joshua Sylvester, London. 1584.’

“Musing, anon through crooked walks he wanders, Round winding rings, and intricate meanders. False-guiding paths, doubtful, beguiling, strays, And right-wrong errors of an endless maze; Nor simply hedged with a single border Of rosemary cut out with curious order In Satyrs, Centaurs, Whales, and half-men-horses, And thousand other counterfeited corses; But with true beasts, fast in the ground still sticking Feeding on grass, and th’ airy moisture licking, Such as those Borametz in Scythia bred Of slender seeds, and with green fodder fed; Although their bodies, noses, mouths, and eyes, Of new-yeaned lambs have full the form and guise, And should be very lambs, save that for foot Within the ground they fix a living root Which at their navel grows, and dies that day That they have browzed the neighbouring grass away. Oh! wondrous nature of God only good, The beast hath root, the plant hath flesh and blood. The nimble plant can turn it to and fro, The nummed beast can neither stir nor goe, The plant is leafless, branchless, void of fruit, The beast is lustless, sexless, fireless, mute: The plant with plants his hungry paunch doth feede, Th’ admired beast is sowen a slender seed.”

About the middle of the seventeenth century very little belief in the story of the “Scythian Lamb” remained amongst men of letters, although it continued to be a subject of discussion and research for at least a hundred and fifty years later.

Athanasius Kircher, Professor of Mathematics at Avignon, who wrote[12] in 1641, after following the error of his predecessors of quoting Scaliger as a believer in the myth, says:--

[12] ‘_Magnes; sive de arte magneticâ opus tripartitum_,’ p. 730.

“Some authors have regarded it as an animal, some as a plant; whilst others have classed it as a true zoophyte. In order not to multiply miracles, we assert that it is a plant. Though its form be that of a quadruped, and the juice beneath its woolly covering be blood which flows if an incision be made in its flesh, these things will not move us. It will be found to be a plant.”

This unwavering prediction has been fulfilled. But the story had to pass through many vicissitudes of acceptance and disbelief before this decision of Kircher was unanimously admitted to be correct. It seems to have been the fate of this curious fable, through the whole period of its history, that no sooner has a ray of some author’s common sense penetrated the mist of superstition by which it was surrounded than it has been again befogged by the ignorant credulity of the next writer on the subject.

Jans Janszoon Strauss, a Dutchman, better known as Jean de Struys, who travelled through many countries, and amongst them Tartary, from 1647 to 1672, describes[13] this vegetable wonder. But he was an uneducated and credulous man, and his account of it is little more than a repetition of the errors and fallacies of former centuries concerning it, rendered still more incomprehensible by his having confused with its “very white down, as soft as silk,” the Astrachan lamb-skins, which were then, and are still, a well-known article of commerce. He says:--

[13] ‘_Voyages de Jean de Struys en Moscovie, en Tartarie, et en Perse_,’ chap. xii. p. 167. Amsterdam. 1681. Also an English translation, “done out of Dutch,” by John Morrison. London. 1684. See Appendix E.

“On the west side of the Volga is a great dry and waste heath, called the Step. On this heath is a strange kind of fruit found, called ‘Baromez’ or ‘Barnitsch,’ from the word ‘Boran,’ which is “a Lamb” in the Russian tongue, because of its form and appearance much resembling a sheep, having head, feet and tail. Its skin is covered with a down very white and as soft as silk. The Tartars hold this in great esteem, and it is sold for a high price. I have myself paid five or six roubles for one of these skins, and doubled my money when I sold it again. The greater number of persons have them in their houses, where I have seen many. That which caused me to observe it with greater attention was that I had seen one of these fruits among the curiosities in the house of the celebrated Mr. Swammerdam, in Amsterdam, whose museum is full of the rarest things in Nature from distant and foreign lands. This precious plant was given to him by a sailor who had been formerly a slave in China. He found it growing in a wood, and brought away sufficient of its skin to make an under-waistcoat. The description he gave of it did very much agree with what the inhabitants of Astrachan informed me of it. It grows upon a low stalk, about two and a half feet high, some higher, and is supported just at the navel. The head hangs down, as if it pastured or fed on the grass, and when the grass decays it perishes: but this I ever looked upon as ridiculous; although when I suggested that the languishing of the plant might be caused by some temporary want of moisture, the people asseverated to me by many oaths that they have often, out of curiosity, made experience of that by cutting away the grass, upon which it instantly fades away. Certain it is that there is nothing which is more coveted by wolves than this, and the inward parts of it are more congeneric with the anatomy of a lamb than mandrakes are with men. However, what I might further say of this fruit, and what I believe of the wonderful operations of a secret sympathy in Nature, I shall rather keep to myself than aver, or impose upon the reader with many other things which I am sensible would appear incredible to those who had not seen them.”

The next traveller, in order of date, who made the Tartarian Lamb the object of his investigations was Dr. Engelbrecht Kaempfer, who, in 1683, accompanied an embassy to Persia, and was appointed Surgeon to the Dutch East India Company two years later. He reported, on his return, that he had searched “_ad risum et nauseam_” for this “zoophyte feeding on grass,” that there was nothing in the country where it was believed to grow that was called “Borametz,” except the ordinary sheep, and that all accounts of a sheep growing upon a plant were mere fiction and fable. “The word ‘Borametz,’” he says,[14] “is a corruption of the Russian ‘Boranetz,’ in Polish ‘Baranak,’ the diminutive of which, ‘Baran,’ is Sclavonic. In such a case it signifies ‘a sheep.’ But,” he continues, “there is in some of the provinces near the Caspian Sea a breed of sheep totally different from those with which we are commonly acquainted, and highly valued for the elegance of the skin, which is used in various articles of clothing by the Tartars and Persians. For the magnates and the rich who desire a material superior to that worn by the general population, the skins of the youngest lambs are preserved, the fleeces of these being much softer that those of the older ones, and the younger the animal from which they are taken the more costly are they.” He then refers to the barbarous custom of killing the ewes before the time of natural parturition to obtain possession of the immature fleece of the unborn lamb, and says, correctly, that the earlier the stage of pregnancy in which this operation is performed the finer and softer is the fur of the fœtal skin, and the lighter and closer are the little curls for which it is chiefly prized. The pelt, also, is so thin that it is scarcely heavier than a membrane, and, in drying, it frequently shrinks so as to lose all similitude to the skin of a lamb, and assumes a form which might lead the ignorant and credulous to believe that it was a woolly gourd. He, therefore, conjectures that some of these dried and shrunken skins may have been placed in museums as examples of the fleece of the “Tartarian Lamb,” under the supposition that they were of vegetable origin.

[14] ‘_Amœnitatum Exoticarum politico-physico-medicarum fasciculi_,’ x., lib. 3, obs. 1. Lemgo, 1712. Kaempfer’s MSS. and collections were acquired by Sir Hans Sloane, and were deposited in the British Museum.

Kaempfer’s suggestions were ingenious, though his theory was erroneous. But, although he rather impeded than assisted in the correct identification of the object of discussion, he, at least, helped to discredit the myth, which he declared to be one of those “received with favour by the superstitious, and which when once they have found a writer to describe them, however incorrectly, please the many, obtain numerous adherents, and become respectable by age.”

An important chapter in the history of this curious fiction was reached when, in 1698, Sir Hans Sloane[15] laid before the Royal Society an object which has ever since been generally regarded as a specimen of the strange natural production about which so much mystery had existed, so many outrageous stories had been told, and on which so much learned discussion had been expended. His description of it is printed in the Society’s Transactions, and is as follows:--

[15] Philosophical Transactions, vol. xx. p. 861; and Lowthorp’s Abridgment of the Phil. Trans. vol. ii. p. 649.

“The figure (fig. 4) represents what is commonly, but falsely, in India, called ‘the Tartarian Lamb,’ sent down from thence by Mr. Buckley.[16] This was more than a foot long, as big as one’s wrist, having seven protuberances, and towards the end some foot-stalks about three or four inches long, exactly like the foot-stalks of ferns, both without and within. Most part of this was covered with a down of a dark yellowish snuff colour, some of it a quarter of an inch long. This down is commonly used for spitting of blood, about six grains going to a dose, and three doses pretended to cure such a hæmorrhage. In Jamaica are many scandent and tree ferns which grow to the bigness of trees, and have such a kind of _lanugo_ on them, and some of the capillaries have something like it. It seemed to be shaped by art to imitate a lamb, the roots or climbing parts being made to resemble the body, and the extant foot-stalks the legs. This down is taken notice of by Dr. Merret at the latter end of Dr. Grew’s Mus. Soc. Reg. by the name of ‘Poco Sempie,’ a ‘golden moss,’ and is there said to be a cordial. I have been assured by Mr. Brown, who has made very good observations in the East Indies, that he has been told by those who lived in China that this down or hair is used by them for the stopping of blood in fresh wounds, as cob-webs are with us, and that they have it in so great esteem that few houses are without it; but on trials I have made of it, though I may believe it innocent, yet I am sure it is not infallible.”

[16] This specimen evidently came from China; for I find a record that at the date of Sir Hans Sloane’s paper “Mr. Buckley, Chief Surgeon at Fort St. George, in the East Indies, presented to the Royal Society a cabinet containing Chinese surgical and other instruments and simples.”

Sir Hans Sloane had, it is true, clearly perceived the nature of the specimen sent to the Royal Society by Mr. Buckley, and had correctly identified it as a portion of one of the arborescent ferns; but on the question whether he had discovered the right interpretation of the puzzling enigma I shall have more to say presently. The object figured seems to have been regarded by many of his contemporaries as so insufficient to meet the requirements of the oft-told story of the plant-animal, and so unsatisfactory an explanation of it, that every one who subsequently had an opportunity of visiting Tartary still felt it to be his duty to make enquiries concerning the famous prodigy of that country.

Accordingly, we find that John Bell, of Autermony, availed himself of the opportunity afforded him by a diplomatic journey to Persia,[17] in 1715-1722, to endeavour, whilst in Tartary, to obtain authentic information respecting the “Vegetable Lamb.” He found that nothing was known of it in the country where it was supposed to be indigenous, and thus writes of it:--

[17] ‘Travels from St. Petersburg in Russia to various parts of Asia, in 1716, 1719, 1722, &c., by John Bell, of Autermony. Dedicated to the Governor, Court of Assistants, and Freemen of the Russia Company. London. 1764.’ See Appendix F.

“Before I leave Astracan, it may be proper to rectify a mistaken opinion which I have observed to occur in grave German authors, who, in treating of the remarkable things of this country relate that there grows in this desart, or stepp adjoining to Astracan, in some plenty, a certain shrub or plant called in the Russian language ‘Tartasky Borashka,’ _i.e._ ‘Tartarian Lamb,’ with the skins of which the caps of the Armenians, Persians, Tartars, &c., are faced. They also write that the ‘Tartashky Borashka’ partakes of animal, as well as vegetative life, and that it eats up and devours all the grass and weeds within its reach. Though it may be thought that an opinion so very absurd could find no credit with people of the meanest understanding, yet I have conversed with some who were much inclined to believe it, so very prevalent is the prodigious and absurd with some part of mankind. In search of this wonderful plant I walked many a mile accompanied by Tartars who inhabit these desarts; but all I could find out were some dry bushes, scattered here and there, which grow on a single stalk with a bushy top of a brownish colour: the stalk is about eighteen inches high, the top consisting of sharp prickly leaves. It is true that no grass or weeds grow within the circle of its shade--a property natural to many other plants, here and elsewhere. After a careful enquiry of the more sensible and experienced among the Tartars, I found they laughed at it as a ridiculous fable.”

Bell further says:--

“In Astracan they have large quantities of lamb-skins, grey and black, some waved and others curled, all naturally and very pretty, having a fine gloss, especially the waved, which at a small distance appear like the richest watered tabby:[18] they are much esteemed, and are much used for the lining of coats and the turning up of caps, in Persia, Russia, and other parts. The best of these are brought from Bucharia, China, and the countries adjacent, and are taken from the ewe’s belly after she hath been killed, or the lamb is killed immediately after it is lambed, for such a skin is equal in value to the sheep. The Kalmuks and those Tartars who inhabit the desert in the neighbourhood of Astracan have also lamb-skins which are applied to the same purpose, but the wool of these being rougher and more hairy, they are inferior to those of Bucharia and China both in gloss and beauty, and also in the dressing; consequently in value. I have known one single lamb-skin from Bucharia sold for five or six shillings sterling, when one of these would not yield two shillings.”

[18] A rich watered silk: from the French “_tabis_”; Italian, “_tabi_”; Persian, “_retabi_.”

Bell had sufficient discrimination to see that these Astracan lamb-skins were in no way connected with the fable of the “Borametz,” and thus avoided the error of Kaempfer, who regarded them as having given rise to the reports of the existence of that marvellous “animal-plant.”

The Abbé Chappe-d’Auteroche, during his visit to Tartary,[19] about half a century later than John Bell, sought for the “Scythian Lamb” with equal earnestness and with similar want of success.

[19] ‘Voyage en Sibérie,’ Paris. 1768.

Long, however, before the result of the investigations of these two travellers had been made known, a second manipulated fern-root, similar to that described by Sir Hans Sloane, had been subjected to the scrutiny of another keen and scientific observer.

In September, 1725, Dr. John Philip Breyn, of Dantzic, addressed to the Royal Society of London an important communication in Latin on this subject,[20] in which he expressed his complete disbelief in the old story, and described a specimen of the “Borametz” (as he believed it to be) which had fallen into his hands, and which had led him, independently, to the same conclusion as that arrived at by Sir Hans Sloane, of whose observations, he says, he was unaware when his own memoranda were written. Commencing by quoting the maxim, “_Non fingendum sed inveniendum quid Natura faciat aut ferat_,” he urges upon all who search for the hidden treasures of Nature, or who desire to discover her secrets, to bear in mind that golden axiom that “the works and productions of Nature should be discovered, not invented,” and remarks that, if the older writers had adhered to this, Natural History, great and honourable in itself, would not have been tarnished by so many silly fables like that of the “Scythian Lamb.” He directs attention to the fact that none of those who have described this plant-animal are able to say that they ever saw it growing; quotes Kaempfer’s interpretation of the origin of the report, namely the Astrachan lamb-skins of commerce, and hesitates to regard the object in his possession as the key of the problem. That he had grave and sufficient reasons for his doubts upon this point will be seen from his interesting description of the curiosity referred to. He says:--

[20] ‘_Dissertiuncula de Agno Vegetabili Scythico, Borametz vulgo dicto._’ Phil. Trans., vol. xxxiii. p. 353, 1725; and also in Martyn’s Abridgment of the Phil. Trans., vol. vi. p. 317.

“A certain learned and observant man, passing through our city on his return from a journey through Muscovy, enriched my museum with, amongst other natural curiosities, one of these ‘Scythian Lambs,’ which he declared to be the genuine Borametz. It was about six inches in length, and had a head, ears, and four legs. Its colour was that of iron-rust, and it was covered all over with a kind of down, like the fibres of silk-plush, except upon the ears and legs, which were bare, and were of a somewhat darker tawny hue. On careful examination of it, I discovered that it was not an animal production, nor yet a fruit, but either the thick creeping root, or the climbing stem, of some plant, which by obstetric art had acquired the form of a quadruped animal. For the four legs, which looked as if the feet had been cut off from them, were so many stalks which had supported leaves, as were also those which formed the ears, and which more nearly resembled horns. The fibres emerging from these, by which, like other plants, this root or stalk had conveyed nutriment, left no doubt upon this point. Close inspection also showed that one of the front legs had been artificially inserted, and that the head and neck were not of one continuous substance with the body, but had been very cleverly and neatly joined on to it. In fact, this root, or stem, had been skilfully manipulated into the form of a lamb in the same artful manner as the little figures of men, which, it was said, shrieked and dropped human blood when drawn from the ground, were formed from the roots of the mandragore and bryony.”

Dr. Breyn added that there remained in his mind some doubt as to the plant from which this burlesque of nature and art was fabricated, until the similarity of its ferruginous silky fibres to those of some of the capillaries suggested the thought that it must be a portion of some exotic fern. As to the particular species to which it belonged he was unable to pronounce an authoritative opinion, but, hoping in the course of time to receive more certain information concerning it, he would merely say that he believed it was of a peculiar species found in Tartary, and up to that date undescribed.

Dr. Breyn’s confirmation of Sir Hans Sloane’s identification of the “Scythian Lamb” as the stem or rootlet of a fern artificially and cleverly manipulated was a crushing blow to the already weakened fable. Unfortunately, however, the conclusion thus arrived at was utterly misleading, though it not only satisfied his contemporaries, but has ever since--even to the present day--been universally accepted as the correct interpretation of the problem. The injurious result was, that, as the question appeared to have been set at rest, enquiry ceased, and for nearly sixty years afterwards no more was heard of the “Vegetable Lamb.”

Towards the close of the century two eminent botanists, who were, of course, well acquainted with the specimens that had been described by Sir Hans Sloane and Dr. Breyn, were constrained in writing of the poetry of their science to make the legendary “Borametz” their theme.

Dr. Erasmus Darwin, in 1781, contributed to the literature of the subject the following lines[21]:--

[21] ‘The Botanic Garden.’ A poem in two parts; with philosophical notes. London. 1781.

“E’en round the Pole the flames of love aspire, And icy bosoms feel the secret fire, Cradled in snow, and fanned by Arctic air, Shines, gentle Borametz, thy golden hair; Rooted in earth, each cloven foot descends, And round and round her flexile neck she bends, Crops the grey coral moss, and hoary thyme, Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime; Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam, And seems to bleat--a ‘vegetable lamb.’”

Dr. Erasmus Darwin appears to have bestowed “golden hair” upon his Borametz, to assimilate it to the fern-root toys that were regarded as its prototypes; but as the fern of which they were made is a native of Southern China, and as no author has described the lamb-plant as being found in a cold climate, his authority and his motive for locating it in an arctic region are alike inexplicable.

Dr. De la Croix, the other botanical author above referred to, extolled, in 1791, the fabulous animal-plant in a Latin poem[22] which Bishop Atterbury characterized as “excellent, and approaching very near to the versification of Virgil’s ‘Georgics.’”

[22] ‘Connubia Florum, Latino Carmine Demonstrata.’ Bath. 1791.

“Qui Caspia sulcant Æquora, sive legant spumosa Boristhenis ora Sive petant Asiam velis, et Colchica regna, Hinc atque inde stupent visu mirabile monstrum: Surgit humo Borames. Præcelso in stipite fructus Stat quadrupes. Olli vellus. Duo cornua fronte Lanea, nec desunt oculi; rudis accola credit Esse animal, dormire die, vigilare per umbram, Et circum exesis pasci radicitus herbis: Carnibus Ambrosiæ sapor est, succique rubentes Posthabeat quibus alma suum Burgundia Nectar; Atque loco si ferre pedem Natura dedisset, Balatu si posset opem implorare voracis Ora lupi contra, credas in stirpe sedere Agnum equitem, gregibusque agnorum albescere colles.”

As this has not been “done into English” (to use an old phrase), I venture to offer the following translation of it:--

“The traveller who ploughs the Caspian wave For Asia bound, where foaming breakers lave Borysthenes’ wild shores, no sooner lands Than gazing in astonishment he stands; For in his path he sees a monstrous birth, The Borametz arises from the earth: Upon a stalk is fixed a living brute, A rooted plant bears quadruped for fruit, It has a fleece, nor does it want for eyes, And from its brows two woolly horns arise. The rude and simple country people say It is an animal that sleeps by day And wakes at night, though rooted to the ground, To feed on grass within its reach around. The flavour of Ambrosia its flesh Pervades; and the red nectar, rich and fresh, Which vineyards of fair Burgundy produce Is less delicious than its ruddy juice. If Nature had but on it feet bestowed, Or with a voice to bleat the lamb endowed, To cry for help against the threat’ning fangs Of hungry wolves; as on its stalk it hangs, Seated on horseback it might seem to ride, Whit’ning with thousands more the mountain side.”

We must now leave the poetical view of the subject, and come to facts.

The substance of which the artificial animals exhibited by Sir Hans Sloane and Dr. Breyn were constructed is the long root-stock of a fern of the genus _Dicksonia_, of which there are from thirty to thirty-five species, varying greatly in size, in their mode of growth, and in the cutting of their fronds. Some of them, such as _D. antarctica_, a native of Australia and New Zealand, often seen in our greenhouses, are tree-like in habit, having stems from ten to forty feet in height, and fronds two or three yards in length, and two feet or more across; whilst others have root-stocks creeping along the surface of the ground. The genus is most fully represented in tropical America and Polynesia: one species extends as far north as the United States and Canada, and another was introduced into this country from St. Helena. In some species, such as _D. Molluccensis_, from Java, the stems are furnished with strong hooked prickles; in others they are densely clad at the base with a thick coat of yellow-brown hairs, which shine almost like burnished gold. The stems of _D. Sellowiana_, from tropical America, are so thickly clad with long fibrous hairs, changing to brown or nearly black, that it has been said they precisely resemble the thighs of the howling monkeys.[23]

[23] See ‘European Ferns,’ by James Britten, F.L.S.; with coloured illustrations from Nature, by Dr. Blair, F.L.S. Cassell. London.--A work full of information on the culture, classification, and history of ferns. I am indebted to it for many of the details here given of the economic value of ferns.

The species of _Dicksonia_ which has been supposed to have given origin to the fable of the “Scythian Lamb” has, from that circumstance, received the name of _Barometz_. It was formerly known as _Cibotium glaucescens_. It was introduced into cultivation in conservatories in this country about the year 1830, and was shortly afterwards described as _Cibotium barometz_, but the genus _Cibotium_ is now generally united with _Dicksonia_. Its long caudex, or root-stock, creeps over the surface of the ground in the same manner as that of the better known “Hare’s-foot” fern, _Davallia Canariensis_, and this is covered with long silky hairs, or scales, which look something like wool when old and dry. These hairs or scales have been sometimes used as a styptic in Germany, and also, very commonly, in China, as related to Sir Hans Sloane by Dr. Brown. The similar hairs of other species of _Dicksonia_, natives of the Sandwich Islands, are exported to the extent of many thousands of pounds weight annually under the name of “Pulu,” and are used in the stuffing of mattrasses, cushions, &c. The hairs of _D. culcita_ are similarly utilised in Madeira. No more than two or three ounces of hair are yielded by each plant, and it is reckoned that about four years must elapse before another gathering can be obtained.

The rhizomes and stems of many ferns abound in starch, and have a commercial value, either as medicine or food. The soft mucilaginous pith of _Cyathea medullaris_, one of the large tree-ferns of New Zealand, was formerly eaten by the natives. It is of a reddish colour, and, when baked, acquires a somewhat pungent flavour. In New Zealand ferns seem to be in some repute for their edible properties, for the large scaly rhizomes of _Marattia fraxinea_, and those of another fern, _Pteris esculenta_, nearly allied to our common bracken, _P. aquilina_, are also eaten by the Maoris. The natives bake them in ashes, peel them with their teeth, and eat them with meat, as we do bread; and sometimes pound them between stones, in order to extract the nutritious matter, the woody part being rejected as useless. In Nepaul, the rhizomes of _Nephrolepis tuberosa_ are similarly prepared for food; and in New Caledonia the mucilaginous matter of _Cyathea vieillardii_ is obtained from incisions made in the stem, or at the base of the fronds. The succulent fronds of the little water-fern, _Ceratopteris thalictroides_, are boiled and eaten as a vegetable by the poorer classes in the Indian Archipelago. The young shoots of the handsome tree-fern, _Angiopteris evecta_, are eaten in the Society Islands, and its large rhizome, which is in great part composed of mucilage, yields, when dried, a kind of flour. In the same islands the young fronds of _Helminthostachys limulata_, the “Balabala” of the Fiji Islands, are eaten in times of scarcity; and the soft scales covering the _stipes_ of the fronds are used by the white settlers for stuffing pillows and cushions in preference to feathers, because they do not become heated, and are thus more comfortable in a sultry climate. In New South Wales, the thick rhizome of _Blechnum cartilagineum_ is much eaten by the natives. It is first roasted and then beaten, so as to break away the woody fibre: it is said to taste like a waxy potato.

By skilful treatment the inhabitants of Southern China occasionally converted the thick root-stock of one of these tree-ferns, “_Dicksonia barometz_,” into a rough semblance of a quadruped, which quadruped, by a foregone conclusion, was supposed to be a lamb. They removed entirely the fronds that grew upward from the rhizome, excepting four, and these four they trimmed down until only about four inches of each stalk was left. The object thus shaped being turned upside down, the root-stock represented the body of the animal, and was supported by the four inverted stalks of the fronds, as upon four legs. If the specimen had an insufficient number of stalks growing from it to make the four legs, others were artificially and neatly affixed to it; ears were similarly provided, and, if necessary, the trunk was fitted with a head and neck made from another root-stock.

So far, well! The identification of the material of which these imitations of four-legged animals were fashioned as the rhizome and frond-stalks of a tree-fern is complete, and perfectly satisfactory. But, having given to these root-stocks of tree-ferns the full benefit of an acknowledgment of the economic uses that have been made of them in various ways and in different localities, and having frankly stated the still accepted theory of their connection with the myth of the “Vegetable Lamb of Scythia,” I have to express my very decided opinion that they and the “lambs” (?) made from them had no more to do with the origin of the fable of the “_Barometz_” than the artificial mermaids so cleverly made by the Japanese have had to do with the origin of the belief in fish-tailed human beings and divinities. In the first place, as we shall presently see, these manipulated ferns were not intended by those who fashioned them to resemble lambs at all. Secondly, if they had been intended to represent the lamb of the fable, they could have been, like the Japanese mermaids, only the outcome and illustration of the legend--not the objects which first gave rise to it. Neither the one nor the other of these counterfeit fabrications appears to have been ever common; and neither was certainly manufactured in sufficient numbers, nor distributed so abundantly and completely over the habitable globe, as to have laid the foundation of a myth which in the one case was universally believed,[24] and in the other attracted attention all over Europe and Western Asia, and also in Egypt. Very few of the Japanese artificial mermaids have been seen in this country, though they have been eagerly sought for, and the fern-“lambs” that have been brought to England may be counted on one’s fingers.[25]

[24] See the Chapter on “Mermaids” by the Author in ‘Sea Fables Explained,’ one of the Handbooks issued by the Authorities of the Great International Fisheries Exhibition of 1883. London. Clowes and Sons, Limited.

[25] I know of only four--(though, of course, there may be others, of which I shall be glad to receive information)--namely, one in the Botanical department of the British Museum; another in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons; the specimen sent from India by Mr. Buckley to the Royal Society in 1698; and that described by Dr. Breyn in 1725. Of the origin of the first-mentioned nothing is known, though it is apparently the one figured by John and Andrew Rymsdyk, in their ‘_Museum Britannicum_’ (1778, plate xv.), as one of the curious objects in the British Museum. Of the second we only know that it was presented to the College of Surgeons by Mr. Quekett--the habitat of the fern of which it is composed being erroneously given in the Catalogue (No. 177 of “Plants and Invertebrates”) as “Plains of Tartary,” the supposed home of the mythical lamb, but where the fern in question never grew. That sent to England by Mr. Buckley, and which was the subject of Sir Hans Sloane’s paper in 1698, seems to have been lost or mislaid. Whether it remained in the possession of the Royal Society, or was placed by Sir Hans Sloane in his own collection, it ought to be in the British Museum. But nothing is known of it there, nor of the cabinet of surgical instruments and appliances in which it arrived. I have endeavoured to trace it; but although, as usual, I have met with every kind assistance and courtesy from the heads of departments, I have been unsuccessful.

Sir Hans Sloane, who died in 1753, bequeathed his valuable collection and library to the nation on the condition that £20,000 should be paid to his executors for the benefit of his daughters. The Government raised the necessary funds by a guinea lottery, and sufficient money was thus obtained to purchase also (for £10,500) Montague House, in Bloomsbury, which then became the British Museum. When the Royal Society removed from their old premises, in Crane Court, to Somerset House in 1780 they also gave the contents of their cabinets to the National Collection, but many of these, and amongst them this fern-root animal, cannot be found.

Dr. Breyn, of Dantzic, no doubt retained the specimen which he described, and it is probably in some continental collection.

I know, therefore, of only two of these so-called “lambs” extant in this country--one in the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, and the other in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. No history of either of these has been preserved.

Further, it is a fact which seems to have been strangely overlooked, that these tree-ferns, with the creeping root-stocks, do not grow in Tartary. The particular species of _Dicksonia_ from which the doll-“lambs” were made is a native of Southern China, Assam, and the Malayan peninsula and islands.[26] And we have conclusive evidence, in addition to the report made by Mr. Buckley to the Royal Society (p. 27), that these playthings themselves were of Chinese workmanship.

[26] ‘_Synopsis Filicum_,’ by Sir W. J. Hooker and J. G. Baker, F.L.S. 1863. Art. “Dicksonia barometz.”

Juan de Loureiro, an accomplished Portuguese botanist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Lisbon, who lived and laboured as a Catholic missionary for more than thirty years in Cochin China, and, afterwards, for three years in China, thus writes[27]:--

[27] _Flora Cochinchinensis_, tom. i. p. 675. Lisbon. 1790.

“The _Polypodium borametz_ grows in hilly woods in China and Cochin China. Many authors have written of the Scythian Lamb, or Borametz--most of them fabulously. Ours is not a fruit, but a root, which is easily shaped by the help of a little art into the form of _a small rufous dog, by which name, and not by that of a ‘lamb,’ it is called by the Chinese_.”

Loureiro describes the cutting off the stalks to form the legs, the fixing on of smaller ones as ears, and other particulars of the rude manufacture of these fern-root dogs, as witnessed by himself. The common name of these toys in China--“Cau-tich,” and in Cochin China, “Kew-tsie,” both represent a “tan-coloured dog.”

It must also be borne in mind that the lamb-plant was represented as springing from a seed like that of a melon, but rounder, and that the natives of the country where it grew planted these seeds. It was therefore a cultivated plant. The lamb, it was also stated, was contained within the fruit or seed-capsule of the plant; and when this fruit, or seed-pod, was ripe it burst open, and the little lamb within it was disclosed. The wool of this lamb was described by various writers as being “very white,” “as white as snow,” whereas these root-stocks of ferns bear no resemblance to a lamb in their natural condition; and when they have been deftly trimmed into shape the hairs or scales upon them are tawny orange, matching better with the “tan” markings of a dog, which they were intended to represent, than with the soft, white fleece of a young lamb.

Therefore, even if I had no better explanation to offer, I should be led to the conclusion that the identification of these _tawny_ toy-_dogs_, made in _China_ from the _root_ of a _wild_ fern, the spores of which are _as small as dust_, with the “Vegetable _Lambs_” of _Scythia_, whose _white_ fleeces were found within the ripe and opening _fruit_ of a _cultivated_ plant, raised from _a large seed_, was obviously erroneous, and that the origin of the rumour must be sought for elsewhere.

The plant that set all Europe talking of the lambs that grew in fruits and on stalks of plants somewhere in Scythia was one of far higher importance and value to mankind than the childish knick-knacks made for amusement out of the creeping root-stocks of ferns. These and the curly-fleeced progeny of the poor ewes of Astrachan were lambs that crossed the track of the first, lost lamb, and led those searching for it into the mistake of following their respective trails, whilst the original “Scythian Lamb” escaped from sight.

Tracing the growth and transition of this story of the lamb-plant from a truthful rumour of a curious fact into a detailed history of an absurd fiction, I have no doubt whatever that it originated in early descriptions of the cotton plant, and the introduction of cotton from India into Western Asia and the adjoining parts of Eastern Europe.

Herodotus, writing (B.C. 445) of the usages of the people of India, says (lib. iii. cap. 106) of this cotton:--“Certain trees bear for their fruit fleeces surpassing those of sheep in beauty and excellence, and the natives clothe themselves in cloths made therefrom.”

In the 47th chapter of the same book, Herodotus describes a corselet sent by Aahmes (or Amasis) II., King of Egypt, to Sparta as having been “ornamented with gold and _fleeces from the trees_”--padded with cotton, in fact.

Ctesias, also, who was the contemporary of Herodotus, and was made prisoner, and kept by the King of Persia as his court physician for seventeen years, was acquainted with the use of a kind of wool, the produce of trees, for spinning and weaving amongst the natives of India, for he mentions in his ‘_Indica_’ a fragment quoted by Photius, “tree-garments”; and that he thus referred to clothing made from these tree-fleeces we have the testimony of Varro:--“Ctesias says that there are in India _trees that bear wool_.”

Nearchus, the admiral of Alexander the Great, reported that “there were in India trees bearing, as it were, flocks or bunches of wool, and that the natives made of this wool garments of surpassing whiteness, or else their black complexions made the material appear whiter than any other.”

Aristobulus, another of Alexander’s generals, made mention in his journal of the cotton plant, under the name of “the wool-bearing tree,” and stated that “it bore a capsule that contained seeds which were taken out, and that which remained was carded like wool.”

Strabo, who records this (lib. xv. cap. 21), referring to it in another paragraph, writes:--“Nearchus says that their (the natives’) fine clothing was made from this wool, and that the Macedonians used it for mattresses and the stuffing of their saddles.”[28]

[28] Unfortunately the Journal and Narrative of Nearchus, written B.C. 325-324, are lost, as are also those of Aristobulus, who seems to have been a very accurate observer; and we are indebted to Strabo and Arrian for the summaries and extracts from them that we possess. Strabo’s ‘_Geographia_’ was completed A.D. 21, about three years before his death. Fabius Arrianus wrote his ‘_Historia Indica_,’ and ‘_Periplus Maris Erythræi_,’ which contain valuable particulars of Alexander’s expedition, about A.D. 131-135.

Theophrastus, the disciple of Aristotle, writing about B.C. 306, says[29]:--

[29] ‘_De Historia Plantarum_,’ lib. iv. cap. 4.

“The trees from which the Indians make their clothes have leaves like those of the black mulberry, but the whole plant resembles the dog-rose. They are planted in rows on the plains, so as to look like vines at a distance.”

In another passage of the same book (cap. 9) he writes:--

“In the Island of Tylos, which is in the Arabian Gulf,[30] the wool-bearing trees, which grow there abundantly, have leaves like the vine, but smaller. They bear no fruit, but the pod containing the wool is about the size of a spring apple (“μηλον”), whilst it is unripe and closed, but when it is ripe it opens: the wool is then gathered from it, and woven into cloths of various qualities--some inferior, but others of great value.”

[30] Theophrastus is in error in placing Tylos in the Arabian Gulf (which we now call the Red Sea); it was in the Persian Gulf, and is now known as Bahrsin. The ancients, however, gave to the whole of the sea between the east coast of Africa, north of Mogador, and the west shores of India the name of the “Erythræan Sea,” from King Erythros, of whom nothing more is known than the name, which, in Greek, signifies “red.” From this casual meaning of the word it came to be believed that the water of this sea differed in colour from that of others, and that it was consequently more difficult to navigate.

This description by Theophrastus is remarkably correct as applied to the herbaceous variety of the cotton-plant, from which the chief supply of cotton for spinning and weaving into cloth has always been obtained. In its mode of growth--branched, spreading, and flexible--it may well be likened to the dog-rose; and its palmate leaves bear a close resemblance to those of the black mulberry, which differ little from the leaves of some varieties of the vine. The remark relative to the mode of cultivation is also exactly applicable to the cotton-plant, which is set in rows about four feet asunder, and the plants about two feet apart, so that a field of it resembles a vineyard when seen from a distance.

Pomponius Mela, the author next in order of time, also writes in his account of India[31] of the “trees that produce wool used by the natives for clothing.”

[31] _De Situ Orbis_, lib. iii. cap. 7.

Then comes Pliny, who, incompetent and worthless as a naturalist, though admirable as a writer, obscured this subject, as he did many others. In his ‘Natural History’[32] he mentions cotton in four different paragraphs, and in every one of them inaccurately. He confuses cotton with flax, and the fabrics woven of it with linen, and treats of silk as a downy substance scraped from the leaves of trees. And, in transcribing, or translating, the passage from Theophrastus relating to the “wool-bearing trees,” he distorts the author’s words, and states that “these trees bear _gourds_ the size of a quince, which burst when ripe, and display balls of wool out of which the inhabitants make cloths like valuable linen.” Pliny therefore seems to have been the author of the “gourd” portion of the story which afterwards obtained currency in Western Europe.

[32] ‘_Naturalis Historia_,’ A.D. 77.

I shall quote one more ancient mention of the “fleece-bearing plant,” because the author of it gives a more exact description than any previous writer of that portion of it from which the wool is taken.

Julius Pollux, who wrote about a hundred years later than Pliny, says in his ‘Onomasticon’:--

“There are also _Byssina_ and _Byssus_, a kind of flax. But among the Indians a sort of wool is obtained from a tree. The cloth made from this wool may be compared with linen, except that it is thicker. The tree produces a fruit most nearly resembling a walnut, but three-cleft. After the outer covering, which is like a walnut, has divided and become dry, the substance resembling wool is extracted, and is used in the manufacture of cloth.”

This remark, of the pericarp of the cotton-pod, in some species of _Gossypium_, being three-cleft, is in accordance with fact, and is not noticed by any previous writer.

In tracing the development of these early and truthful accounts of the cotton-plant into the complete fable of the compound plant-animal, the “Vegetable Lamb of Scythia,” we shall find it, as in the case of some other myths of the Middle Ages, attributable to two principal causes:--

1. The misinterpretation of ambiguous or figurative language; 2. The similarity of appearance of two actually different and incongruous objects.

It is a curious fact, which I believe has not hitherto been noticed in connection with this subject, that the Greek word “μηλον” (melon), very fitly used by Theophrastus in the passage quoted (p. 48) to describe the form and appearance of the unripe cotton-pod, may be equally correctly translated “a fruit,” “an apple,” or “a sheep”: the adjective “ἑαρινόν,” which is also used, means “vernal”; therefore the phrase may be regarded as signifying either that the vegetable wool was taken from a “spring apple” growing upon a tree, or from a “spring-sheep” (or lamb) growing upon a tree. Although I believe that the mistake originated, as I shall presently explain, in the actual and substantial resemblance between cotton wool and lamb’s wool, rather than in the verbal identity of an appellative noun, it is not improbable that this ambiguous phrase of convertible interpretation may, in some measure, have contributed to convey, many centuries later, to readers of a dead language who knew nothing of the plant referred to, an erroneous idea of the nature of “the fleeces that grew on trees.” It would seem so much more likely that a soft fleece of white wool should grow upon a young lamb yeaned in spring-time than inside a fruit like an apple in the partly-formed and unripe condition in which it is found in spring, that students in the Middle Ages, as they pondered doubtfully over this word of double meaning, would probably prefer the first interpretation, and translate the passage of Theophrastus as a statement that the wool was taken from a “spring-sheep,” or lamb, growing upon a tree which bore no other fruit. It is also probable that this use of the Greek word “_melon_” gave rise to the report in later times that the seed of the plant which bore the “Vegetable Lamb” was like that of a melon or gourd.

We may next take into account the prevalence amongst many tribes and nations in both hemispheres of the custom of using figurative language in relation to the objects and occurrences of their daily life.

A very striking and remarkable proof is given us by Herodotus that the Scythians of the North-West, who carried both the cotton and the rumour of the lamb-plant into Muscovy, were in the habit of speaking thus figuratively and metaphorically. He writes (lib. iv. cap. 2):--

“The part beyond the north, the Scythians say, can neither be seen nor passed through, by reason of the feathers shed there; for the earth and air are full of feathers, and it is these which interrupt the view.”

Further on (lib. iv. cap. 31) he also observes:--

“With respect to the feathers with which the Scythians say the air is filled, and on account of which it is not possible either to see further upon the continent, or to pass through it, I entertain the following opinion. In the upper parts of this country it continually snows--less in summer than in winter, as is reasonable. Now, whoever has seen snow falling thick near him will know what I mean; for snow is like feathers, and on account of the winter being so severe the northern parts of this country are uninhabited. I think, then, that the Scythians and their neighbours call the snow feathers, comparing them together.”

Herodotus was, of course, right in this interpretation.

Who can doubt that the people who would thus realistically describe snow as feathers would probably describe the white wool of the cotton-pod as “tree-lamb’s-wool,” the produce of a “lamb-plant,” or “plant-lamb”?

The growth and development of the story of “the Scythian Lamb” from the similarity of appearance of two really different objects may be best explained by comparing it with another Natural-history myth, which ran curiously parallel with it. I allude to the fable that Sir John Mandeville tells us he related to his Tartar acquaintances, viz. that of the “_Barnacle Geese_”--which has never been surpassed as a specimen of ignorant credulity and persistent error.

From the twelfth to the end of the seventeenth century it was implicitly and almost universally believed that in the Western Islands of Scotland certain geese, of which the nesting-places were never found, instead of being hatched from eggs, like other birds, were bred from “shell-fish” which grew on trees. Upon the shores where these geese abounded, pieces of timber and old trunks of trees covered with barnacles were often seen which had been stranded by the sea. From between the partly opened shells of the barnacles protruded their plumose cirrhi, which in some degree resemble the feathers of a bird. Hence arose the belief that they contained real birds. The fishermen persuaded themselves that these birds within the shells were the geese whose origin they had been previously unable to discover, and that they were thus bred, instead of being hatched, like other birds, from eggs. As the tale spread to a distance, it gained by repetition, like the story of “The Three Black Crows” amusingly told by Dr. John Byrom.[33] The trees found upon the shore were soon reported to be trees growing on the shore; that which grew on trees people soon asserted to be the fruit of trees; and thus, from step to step, the story increased in wonder and obtained credit. It was discussed during many centuries by philosophers and men of learning, who, one after another, accepted the evidence in its favour, until Sir Robert Moray, F.R.S., in 1678, reported to the Royal Society that he had examined these barnacles, and that in every shell that he had opened he had “found a little bird--the little bill, like that of a goose; the eyes marked; the head, neck, breast, wings, tail, and feet formed, the feathers everywhere perfectly shaped and blackish-coloured, and the feet like those of other water-fowl.” This nonsense was published in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ (No. 137, January and February, 1678) under the auspices of the highest representatives of science in this country. The old botanist Gerard had previously (in 1597) had the audacity to assert that he had witnessed the transformation of the “shell-fish” into geese.[34]

[33] See Appendix G.

[34] See ‘Sea Fables Explained,’ by the Author, 2nd edition, p. 114. Clowes and Sons, Limited.

In like manner the “wool-bearing plant” of Ctesias, Nearchus, Aristobulus, and Theophrastus, the plant of which Herodotus wrote that “it bore as its fruit fleeces which surpassed those of lambs in beauty and excellence,” was soon reported to be “a plant bearing fruit within which was a little lamb having a fleece of surpassing beauty and excellence.” As it was evident that a living lamb must take food, the “lytylle best” was, in the next version, kindly placed upon a stalk, and so balanced thereon as to be able to bend downward, and browze upon the surrounding herbage. Of course the lamb, if it fed on grass, must have digestive and other organs, like those of lambs ordinarily begotten, so these were liberally bestowed upon it with as much particularity as that exercised by Sir Robert Moray in enumerating the “parts and features” of the “little tree-bird.”[35] The transformation of the wondrous “plant-animal” from “a little lamb with a white fleece disclosed by the bursting of a ripe seed-pod growing on a stalk” into “a lamb growing on a stalk attached to its navel, and browzing on the herbage within its reach,” vastly increased the difficulty of identifying it. Like the barnacle geese, it was discussed by philosophers and sought for by travellers; but its features had been distorted beyond recognition, and, instead of endeavouring to find its original portrait in the pages of old historians and geographers, enquirers looked for fresh information concerning it in the misleading tales of successive travellers. At last, as we have seen, another “vegetable lamb” crossed the trail of the original lost one, in the shape of the two Chinese toy-dogs laid before the Royal Society by Sir Hans Sloane and Dr. Breyn. That distinguished body of savants unfortunately accorded their recognition to the wrongful claimant, and ever since then botanists and antiquarians have regarded the problem as solved, and have been satisfied that in these few rude models of “tan-coloured dogs” they have found the true and original “snow-white” “Vegetable Lamb of Scythia.”

[35] The figures of the ancient partly human, partly piscine deities, from which originated the belief in mermaids, similarly passed through various mutations. The first idea was that of a man coming out of the mouth of a fish. Subsequently, the form was that of a man clad in the skin of a fish--wearing it as a mantle--the head of the fish covering that of the man, like a cap or helmet. And so on, till a being was developed the upper half of whose body was human, and the lower half, from the waist downwards, that of a fish.

The contented acceptance by botanists and other representatives of science, down to the present day, of three or four trumpery toys artificially and roughly fashioned by the Chinese from the rhizomes of a fern which does not grow in Tartary or Scythia, and brought to Europe by travellers at rare intervals, as sufficient to account for the origin of a rumour which spread from Asia all over Europe and attracted the attention of learned men of all countries for many centuries, is not the least remarkable circumstance in the history of the legend of the “Scythian Lamb.”

Well might the old historians consider worthy of record the reports they had heard of the existence of the “wool-bearing tree,” for, as Dr. Ure has remarked,[36] “it would be universally regarded as a miracle of vegetation did not familiarity blunt the moral feelings of mankind. This class of plants, largely distributed over the torrid zone, affords to the inhabitants a spontaneous and inexhaustible supply of the clothing material best adapted to screen their swarthy bodies from the scorching sun, and to favour the cooling influence of the breeze, as well as cutaneous exhalation. While the tropical heats change the soft wool of the sheep into a harsh, scanty hair, unfit for clothing purposes, they cherish and ripen the vegetable wool, with its more slender and porous fibres, admirably suited for clothing in a hot climate, as the grosser and warmer animal fibres are in a cold one. No sooner does the cotton pod arrive at maturity than its swollen capsules burst with an elastic force, in gaping segments, in order, as it were, to display to the most careless eye their white fleecy treasure, and to invite the hand of the observer to pluck it from the seeds, and to work it up into a light and beautiful robe. Thus held forth from the extremity of every bough, by its resemblance to sheep’s wool it could not fail to attract attention.”

[36] ‘The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain,’ p. 71.

Such keen observers as the ancient conquerors of India would have been sure to notice with surprise and interest the wonderful vegetable product which could be compared to nothing so aptly as to the white, soft wool of a little lamb, to appreciate its value and usefulness, and to admire the fabrics manufactured from it. And, as these fabrics gradually found their way northward from India by the great caravan routes, either by Samarcand, or by the passes of the Hindu Kush, by Bokhara and Khiva, through Turkestan and Tartary into Russia, in one direction, and by Egypt to the countries on the Mediterranean in another, the sensation they would cause is not difficult to realise. We can imagine how the newly-arrived trader, as he displayed his goods, would be eagerly questioned by intending purchasers of the novel, soft, white or coloured cloths, so well suited to their requirements, as to the nature of the raw material of which they had been woven. We can picture to ourselves their astonishment when he explained to them that the delicate, white, flossy fibres from which his fabrics were made, of which he, perhaps, showed them a sample, and which looked so like lamb’s wool, was the produce of a plant, the fruit of which burst open when it became ripe, and exposed to view the white wool within it. And we can easily understand how the fame of this spread, and was carried into distant lands, and how this “vegetable lamb’s wool” was discussed and talked about in countries where it, and the yarn spun from it, and the cloths woven from it, had not yet penetrated.

Now, let us complete our identification of the cotton-pod of India as “the Vegetable Lamb” of the fable by showing its right to the title of “the _Scythian_ Lamb.”

There is probably no race of men, or rather aggregate of races, mentioned prominently in history, of whom, and of whose country so little has been definitely known as of the ancient Scythians. They have been generally and vaguely, and, to a certain extent, correctly, regarded as represented in modern times by the numerous hordes of Tartars inhabiting the lands north of the mountains of the Caucasus, and part of central and northern Asia. So exclusively have they been identified with these tribes that the terms Tartary and Scythia have been looked upon as synonymous, and thus “the Scythian Lamb” has been called also the “Tartarian Lamb,” or “the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary.”

Under the name of “Scythia” was included (as may be seen on any good classical map) a vast territory, partly in Europe and partly in Asia, extending from the 25th to the 116th degree of East longitude. The European portion of it was comparatively a small province, known as “Scythia Parva,” and comprised those districts of Silistria and Bessarabia bordering the western shores of the Black Sea, south of the mouths of the Danube. Scythia in Asia, which was separated from Scythia Parva by the two Sarmatias, included the whole of Turkestan, Thibet, Mongolia, and Siberia. It was bounded on the West by the Ural Mountains and river, and extended northward through then unknown regions to the Arctic Circle, and southward to the Himalayas. But still further south, beyond the western Himalayas--the Hindu-Kush--was another part of Scythia, known as “Indo-Scythia.” This stretched southward to the Erythrean Sea (the Arabian Sea), and was that part of India now called Scinde and the Punjab. Through it flowed the Indus and the Hydaspes, and it was on the banks of the latter river, at Bucephalia (either the present Jhelum, or Jubalpore, eighteen miles lower), that Alexander’s admiral collected the flotilla which he conducted down the Hydaspes to its confluence with the Indus, and along the whole course of that great river, and made his way by its lower mouth into the open water of the Arabian Sea. Then and there it was--from the time of their arrival in the country, during the war with Pontus and other Indian princes, and on their ten months’ voyage homeward--that Alexander and his commodore Nearchus saw the native population of Indo-Scythia “clad in garments the material of which was whiter than any other, or at any rate appeared so in contrast with their wearers’ swarthy skin,” and which were “made of the wool like that of lambs, which grew in tufts and bunches upon trees.”

Although more than two thousand years have passed since then, Nearchus’s description of this costume--“a shirt, or tunic, reaching to the middle of the leg, a sheet folded about the shoulders, and a turban rolled round the head”--would be almost equally accurate at the present day. Its wearers may be congratulated that fashion has left unchanged and unspoiled an apparel so serviceable and well-suited to the climate of the country and the habits of its people!

As the “fleeces of vegetable wool, softer and whiter than that of the lamb,” came from Indo-Scythia, the supposed plant-animal that bore them was first called “the Scythian Lamb.”

As time passed on, the name of Scythia in Asia became merged in that of Tartary. From the time that the Mahometans became masters of Egypt and Constantinople, as no Christian was allowed to pass through their dominion to the East, intercourse with India by the two most direct roads ceased entirely. Cotton goods and other merchandise from India were therefore conveyed by the trading caravans before mentioned. The depôt to which they were generally forwarded was Samarcand, as was correctly related to Guillaume Postel by Michel, the Arabic interpreter (p. 13). There they met the great caravan travelling from the East into Russia, and, on the journey, passed through part of Scythia in Asia. In each district the caravan was joined by hosts of Tartar traders carrying with them the wool of their sheep, the hair of their goats, and the skins of both, the soft, curly skins of their lambs, and droves of hardy colts, the produce of their mares, whose milk was, and still is, to them as important an article of diet as that of cows is to ourselves. As the Tartar merchants brought with the fleeces of their sheep, goats, and lambs the fleeces also of “the fine white wool that grew on trees” and the piece-goods made from it, “the vegetable lamb” from which it was supposed to have been sheared became also in this manner identified with Tartary, in the same way as were Indian spices with “Araby,” through which they sometimes passed in transit, but where they never grew. It thus became known as “the wool of the Tartarian Lamb,” and travellers whose curiosity concerning the far-famed “zoophyte” was subsequently aroused sought for it in the dominions of the “Great Cham.” But, just as when Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, afterwards Pope Pius II., sought in Scotland for the “goose-bearing tree,” which he eagerly desired to see, upon being told that it grew much further north, complained that “miracles will always flee farther and farther away”; so when any painstaking traveller in Tartary endeavoured to investigate the subject of the strange “plant-animal,” he was sure to learn (unless he allowed himself to be cunningly hoaxed by the skin of a natural lamb, or the fruit of another plant) that the object of his search was non-existent in its reputed birthplace, and that he must look for it elsewhere.

Thus the story of the “Scythian” or “Tartarian Lamb” grew, and was exaggerated and distorted, until all traces of its origin were so obliterated that even men of thought and learning have been unable to recognise in the misleading descriptions given of it the plant which, excepting corn, is, perhaps, the most valuable to mankind. For, as I have said, it seems to me to be clear and indubitable that the fruit which burst when ripe and disclosed within it “a little lamb” was the cotton pod, and that the soft, white, delicate fleece of “the Vegetable Lamb of Scythia” was that which we still call “Cotton Wool.”